By Ann Saphir<\/p>\n
April 8 (Reuters) – San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly on Wednesday said the U.S. economy is fundamentally in a “good place” despite \u200csharply higher oil prices from the Iran war and the uncertainty over \u200chow long the war will last.<\/p>\n
“What we’ve seen is consumers are still spending, businesses are still investing,” \u200bDaly told the St. George Area Chamber of Commerce in Utah. “There’s a concern that maybe this will push inflation up: that’s our job, we’ll focus on that. And there’s a concern that maybe the labor market isn’t as solid, but we’re not seeing \u200cthat, we’re seeing it kind \u2060of settle at a good place.”<\/p>\n
A deal struck Tuesday for a two-week ceasefire in Iran raised hopes for a prolonged settlement and \u2060sent oil prices dropping. Traders who had begun pricing in the prospect of a Fed rate hike to battle an oil-shock-induced bout of inflation again began pricing in the possibility \u200bof \u200ba rate cut this year.<\/p>\n
Daly did not appear \u200bready to bank on any \u200cof that. Her view that the labor market is stable suggests no hurry to ease policy, and her promise to focus the Fed’s energy on controlling inflation appeared to lean in the opposite direction. She did not speak directly to her view on the appropriate rate path.<\/p>\n
“I see the underlying fundamentals of the economy as really \u200cin a good place,” Daly said. “The question is \u200bwhat’s going to happen with the war? How \u200blong will prices of oil and \u200bgas stay elevated and what will …the knock-on effects be in terms \u200cof other goods and services?”<\/p>\n
She said \u200bthat it was too \u200bearly to know those answers because they depend on how long the conflict lasts.<\/p>\n
“Importantly, we do know that the underlying fundamentals of the economy remain solid \u200band those are things \u200cthat are important to how we see inflation progressing over time and \u200bhow we see the labor market progressing,” Daly said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Ann Saphir, \u200bEditing by Franklin Paul and David Gregorio)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ann Saphir April 8 (Reuters) – San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly on Wednesday said the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101,170848,2802,45696,4011,252103],"class_list":{"0":"post-572538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-fed-rate-hike","11":"tag-labor-market","12":"tag-mary-daly","13":"tag-oil-prices","14":"tag-st-george-area-chamber-of-commerce"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}